Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1884 — How Socrates Was Poisoned. [ARTICLE]

How Socrates Was Poisoned.

It is now pretty evident that in those olden times the poison employed to kill criminals was that of the most virulent kind of snakes. All will remember how its effects were described by Socrate* when he was dying by its means. It commenced by taking away the power of the lower, limbs, and gradually work ing its way upwards. The bite of the cobra produces just the same effect, and causes death in the same way. A case i 3 thus described by an eye witness: Among many instances of snake-bite poisoning I have seen, was a strong young Brahmin of twenty, well known to me, who had been bitten during the night w'hile watching his maize crop. Ere I knew of it they had brought him into my compound in front of the bungalow. As yet he walked quite steadily, only leaning slightly on the arm of another man. There was that peculiar drow.-y look in his eyes, however, as from a strong narcotic, which indicated his having been bitten for some time, and left but little room for hope. He could still clearly tell me the particulars. He had been bitten, he said, on putting his foot to the ground while moving off his charpoy in the dark, but, thinking the bite was that of a nonpoisonous snake, had given no more heed to the matter, and gone to sleep again, till he was awoke by his friends coming in search of him.’ With some difficulty I was able to find the bite—very faint, no larger than the prick from a pin, but still the unmistakable double mark of the poison fangs. He felt the poison, he said, gradually ascending the limb, and pointed to a part just below the knee, where he felt that it had already reached, the limb below that being, he said, benumbed and painless to the touch, like the foot when “asleep. ” I gave him the usual remedies, and kept him walking {o-and-fro, but gradually his limbs seemed to be losing their power or voluntary motion, and his head was beginning to droop 'from the overpowering drowsiness that was surely gathering over him. At intervals he pointed out the poison line steadily rising higher, and was still able to answer questions clearly on being roused. At length it seemed to be of no use torturing him further by keeping him moving about, and he was allowed to remain at rest. Shortly after this, while being supported in a sitting posture, all at once, without any premonitory sign, he gave one or two long sighs and life ceased, about an hour after he had himself walked into the compound. There was something terribly real in this faculty of pointing out each stage of the ascending poison (as the snake-bitten patient always can) that was gradually bringing him nearer and nearer to death, with the prospect of only another hour or half hour of life remaining to him; and yet the patient does not seem to realize this with the keenness that a looker-on does, probably from the poison benumbing at the same time the powers of the mind as well as of the body.— Anon.